


first casualties

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Funerals do not agree with Sirius Black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	first casualties

 

 

So she might be a witch but still Lily has the very Muggle instinct of grabbing the first thing she comes across when she fears there might be a burglar inside the house. The first thing that she comes across and now she's holding in her hand being, of course, her boyfriend's Quidditch bat, sad and unused for years, waiting patiently for better times at the top of the stairs.

She walks down with her back to the wall, not making a sound, watching as the shadow outside the door fiddles with the knob And then, after some angry mumbling Lily can't quite make out into words, the to-be-burglar seems to find what he is looking for and turns the key in the keyhole. The key.

How many burglars have a key to their house?

How many people have the key to their house, for that matter.

Lily calls, tentatively, as the shadow steps into the entrance.

`Black?´

`Blimey, Evans. You haven't called me that since school.´

Lily lets out a long breath; true, her mind resorted to the first days of knowing-Sirius, the days of Sirius-sneaking-up on everybody, just like now.

Unceremoniously Sirius steps completely into the house, polite or reasonable enough to _try_ and close the door behind him, failing horribly and leaving it ajar, only to trip with his own feet and fall flat on his face down the steps to the living room.

_Wham!_

The thing about Sirius Black –the thing that Lily hates the most in the world is that he is the kind of guy who can trip over the carpet in the entrance, drunk, flask in one hand, hair all messy and a stupid grin on his face and _make it look cool_.

`Are you drunk?´

`That's a really boring question. I refuse to answer such a dull question,´ Sirius replies with all the dignity he can muster from being on the floor. He swings the drink in his hand.

And her logical mind goes to that first thing: Where did that drink come from? And shouldn't Sirius be returning that glass to whatever dingy pub he stole it from?

Lily throws on some clothes, the closest thing she has, the black coat she wore to the wake earlier that day. Sirius seems to seize her up, quite a feat considering that he is still lying on his back and watching Lily all upside down.

`I have to say, Evans,´ he comments, mouth pasty. ` _Black_ looks good on you.´

His attempt at his usual come-on voice.

`Everything looks good on me.´

`Your words, not mine.´

She offers him a hand: `Come here.´

He grabs at her hand and tries to turn and stand up at the same time; big mistake, that ends him on the floor again, this time crashing with his knees, very painful.

_Bang_.

Lily winces.

`You're going to wake –´

Too late, already they can hear the rushed footsteps down the stairs.

`What in Merlin's right elbow is going –?´

Finally James comes down, eyes narrow with sleep and hair even messier than Sirius', if that's even possible. Lily can't help but think how adorable he looks; they are in the middle of a damn war and people are actually dying here and she finds James' stupid hair adorable; they have just come from _burying a friend_ this afternoon and she thinks James' stupid hair is adorable. Some times she wonders what's wrong with her.

With a quick and generous gesture James helps Sirius back on his feet again, checking that the fall didn't break his head or his wand, Sirius _finally_ looking mortified under the concerned glare of his friend. He looks down, embarrassing really, it's past three in the morning and he is barging into his friends' house, _drunk_. It's horrible, he knows, it's selfish, he is a selfish kid, he is a kid, black is a horrible colour even if it looks good on Lily, _black is a horrible selfish colour_ and his thoughts crash and mesh like an ugly snowglobe inside his head, he is selfish of course but this what he wanted, he wanted to stumble and fall and find, like always, James' hands. This is Sirius being pathetic and oh that never suited him – _black is a horrible..._ – but he is very good at it.

`It's okay, mate, come in. Lily, close that door, it's freezing outside.´

Nobody can say James Potter is not apt in a crisis situation; Lily admires that about him, which she guesses is what makes him a good sportsman and a good soldier. Lily resents that last.

Sirius snorts – _freezing outside freezing outside well where isn't_ and he dislikes his aptitude for melodrama, a Very Black Quality, he is good at it, his brother is good at it, his cousin Bellatrix is so good at it, and his mother was the best of them all, perfect-pitch good at it. His brother. His cousin. Sirius doesn't want those words in his mind right now. _Make them go away_ not knowing who he is asking.

`S-sirius?´ James places two fingers under his friend's chin, trying to get him to look up.

It has been worrying him all day, Sirius and the way he kept quiet during the funeral. Quiet is not a word he wants to see associated with Sirius. He knows that demeanour and it normally means that he _will do_ something epically stupid eventually. He had disappeared halfway the wake, and Remus and Peter hadn't been able to find him, James carelessly telling everybody _leave him alone, he'll be okay_ , knowing he wouldn't.

Wartime funerals are frightful things, Sirius ponders _now_ , not before, before his mind a blank of _why does this house smell of pot-pourri?_ and drinks served in tiny glasses with handles and realizing that he had never set foot in his friend's house before and now it wasn't even hers, it was her mum's and her dad's, the two wiry grey wizards sitting in a corner wondering what this war was about while Lily and Alice kept asking if they were all right; Sirius didn't know what this war was about either, so the baffled parents of a dead pretty girl made him feel embarrassed, mostly. Wartime funerals are also painfully short, hurried, as if there are so many other bodies to bury even when they are not. They feel like an abridged version of the real thing: Sirius remembers Mr Potter's funeral mostly, a day of constant wind, Sirius remembers the little red veins in James' eyes, Sirius remembers tiny Lily Evans waiting until everyone left the graveyard and he remembers James putting his hands inside the pockets of her coat. Sirius remembers thinking _how does she do that_ , wishing he could too.

Compared to that today's didn't really feel like a funeral. Like something real, something that was happening. Happening to them, happening _to Sirius_.

`I'll make some tea. No, coffee,´ Lily offers.

`I'll help you!´

Sirius stumbles cheerfully towards the kitchen.

`No, you just sit down.´

With one hand over his heart Lily calms him down and guides him to the couch; James has seen her do this many times over the past, horrible weeks. It's like a trick, or like a spell, but all the more real, all the more unexplainable. Because he, James, can cheer Sirius up and he can comfort him and change his mind and he can make him stop but to this day Lily is the only one who can soothe him like this. James watches, mesmerized.

`A double for you, Sirius,´ she instructs as she goes into the kitchen.

Now he is looking into his eyes, James is, James and his eyes and Sirius thinks he can watch the last traces of sleep dissolve there, like clouds being blown away. He is too drunk for metaphors. Good.

`Look at your hair,´ he says, patting James on the head, flattening his rebel brown strands – he does this very slowly, like trying to get the aim right.

James grins. It's not a tired grin. Not like when Lily smiled at him before. It is bright and James-like.

`My hair? Look at yours.´

In the kitchen Lily rest her hands, palm open and down, on the counter, catching her breath as the sounds from the living room reach her, but muffled.

James lets Sirius play with his hair a while longer but he is just a bit too drunk and he pulls it from time to time and it hurts. James wonders if friendship means being willing to go bald for his best mate. He highly doubts it.

`I'm going to check how Lily is doing.´

When he gets up from the couch Sirius waves him goodbye in the exact manner a mother in the pictures would send off her only child going to the front. He is even waving an imaginary handkerchief.

James comes into the kitchen, _Let me help with that_ , and touches Lily's elbow, her neck, the small of her back.

`Should we do something?´ she whispers to him.

`Like what?´

`I don't know. Should we have left him alone in the living room? Is it safe?´

`He is not a baby.´

`Maybe we should feed him. Something with sugar.´

James pats her head.

`I can't wait until you have my children,´ he says.

She slaps his arm for that. (Secretly she is terrified and excited by that idea, _having children_ , and she should not be thinking about, not today of all days)

In the end: they all sit together in the couch, Sirius between James and Lily, cradled by them, protected by them. Lily wonders if having a child will feel like this, when she and James have one, if it's this sheer terror, this urge to do whatever it takes to keep another human being from pain and sadness, and she is doing that again, thinking this again.

James takes the coffee and offers it to Sirius gently.

`Do you need me to hold the mug for you?´ he asks.

`Do I look like a little helpless kid?´ Sirius' face all wrinkled in a frown.

`Does that mean _yes_?´

`...yes,´ Sirius says between his teeth, huffing, the nature of the stray dog never more evident.

He tastes the coffee tentatively, holding on to James' hands, warmer to him than the scorching-hot mug. The coffee tastes sweet, very sweet. _Oh Lily_. Lily and her shy, inadequate attempts at fixing everything. Like a brave little girl against the world. Sirius will always remember her like that, tiny and fragile, red hair all over her face, lips pursed in a disapproving curve, twelve years old, looking like she could take on all the bullies of the school herself.

Sirius is looking at his own hands, rather quizzically.

`Maybe I should have made soup.´

`I have weird fingers,´ Sirius comments. `Have you ever noticed that I have weird fingers? I mean, nobody has ever spent that long looking at my fingers so how could anyone have told me. There's something wrong with them, definitely. They are womanly. James, do you think I have girly fingers?´

`You have girly...´ he exchanges a look with Lily. `Oh so many things.´

`You are a meanie, that's what you... Do you kiss Lily with that mouth?´

A hint of drunkenness still filters into his voice but is fading gradually, the rest is all Sirius, and Lily realizes that she has missed that sound all day, that the worst part of death and war and _bloody Lord Voldemort_ is that they are the only things capable of robbing Sirius Black of his loudness, just when she and James need it more than ever.

Sirius grabs his temples – he believes he has deja-vu, already feeling the upcoming hangover, because that kind of thing is completely possible.

`God, that was horrible today. Funerals do not agree well with Sirius Black.´

`Honey, I do worry so when he starts talking about himself in the third person,´ James tells his girlfriend.

`I know, I know,´ she comforts him, hand on his shoulder – a curiously smooth manoeuvre as Lily does it, considering she has to slip her arm behind Sirius.

Lily reaches for her wand and starts a comforting fire in front of them. Sirius mutters _thanks_ and he hands the mug of coffee back to James, suddenly sick with the idea of anything – solid, liquid, parts of the body – going into inside him right now.

`I'm sorry I left... today. Sorry I left the... thing.´

`It's all right,´ James assures him.

`No, it's not... We're all friends and I left and we should have been all together and I left.´

`Nobody blamed you, Sirius,´ adds Lily, brushing her fingers across his arm. `They all understood.´

`It's all messed up now.´

James knows what he means. This is not supposed to be happening to them, not like this. They are not even twenty. They are not supposed to see their friends being murdered. All day he has been haunted by this feeling of... not loss, that's not what he is feeling now – but he will, soon, he is sure – but of the _unfairness_ of it. James is not that naïve, he knows, in his head, bad things happen to good people, but it's like he doesn't truly believe this, he knows it, but he doesn't believe it. Bad things should not happen to people like them. He cannot imagine a world where unfair, horrible things might happen to Lily, to Sirius.

But that is the world he lives in now and the knowledge of this makes everything else, all the still-good things around him, darken.

`Do you think we should postpone the wedding?´ he asks. This is what he has been thinking all day, what has been haunting him.

Sirius sits up, agitated: `No!´

_It's okay, it's okay_ comes Lily's voice, comes James' solid and gentle hand on the back of his neck.

`We need this wedding,´ Sirius explains, words coming out with difficulty. `We need you, you idiots. This is real, this war... people dying... we need something beautiful, now more than ever.´

He lies down, his head on James' knee and his legs across Lily's lap, like a very heavy pet. James sighs and starts running his fingers through Sirius' long and messy hair.

It's not like he doesn't know his friends are just indulging him but Sirius doesn't care. Not tonight. Well, it's almost morning now. A different kind of _weary_ settles.

`We need this wedding... so I can hook up with the bridesmaids,´ he adds.

James and Lily chuckle and it's weird, feeling them under his weight.

They are his lifeline. He wishes they would laugh again, he wants that tiny earthquake.

He feels childish. Lily runs her fingers along his leg and Sirius thinks I have no right, I have no right, this war is about her, about her. And this is the first time that he says that word in his mind and understands what it means. _War_. And remembers today and understands why there was something more than sorrow in Lily's eyes, something like anger, and he wonders if people like him or James could ever understand, could ever get it, could ever properly love this woman.

It feels as if his mouth is made of fly paper.

`I have one thing to ask you,´ he mumbles and James stretches over to catch his words.

`What is it, mate?´

`...no more funerals.´

His voice is even smaller. James thinks he's heard right but he has to make sure.

`What?´

`Just... no more funerals. All right?´

James and Lily look at each other. What can they say? James' hand stops playing with his friend's hair.

`You have to promise me.´

`Sirius, pal, I don't think we –´

`No. Promise. Promise we'll be heroes and we'll stop anybody else from dying. Starting today. Promise we'll end this war and there won't be any more funerals.´

He looks over his shoulder at Lily; she is making no attempt to hide her doubts, face bright with that kind of wild honesty that Sirius some times despises – that makes him wonder why James didn't pick someone less troublesome for himself (for _both of them_ ).

So he goes back to pressing his cheek against James' knee, the familiar scrawniness and angles of his friend's body.

He's heavy, Lily thinks, heavier than he looks, slight, slippery thing he's always been. He is getting heavier, body across Lily's lap, he's getting heavier in her heart.

James feels tempted to lie to Sirius, remembers the old line about truth being the first casualty in any war, and he would, he would lie to Sirius and for Sirius. But he knows Lily wouldn't.

In the end Sirius falls asleep before James and Lily have to pick their answers, any way or the other; or at least he pretends to fall asleep.

`Can you promise _me_ no more funerals?´James asks his girlfriend.

He is serious. He is afraid. He looks like Sirius has been looking for a long time.

Lily navigates the angles of a sleeping Sirius to reach a cross and run her hand through James' hair. He leans into her touch, closing his eyes as she caresses the back of his neck.

`You know even I can't promise you that.´

`Even you the Mighty Lily Evans can't promise that?´

A return of the old humour; the sort of sweet teasing that made Lily start liking him after so many years of truly disliking him.

`But I promise you this: I will protect you,´ she tells him, eyes big and focused. `You and Sirius. I won't let the bastards get you.´

James chuckles a bit, as he always does in the few occasions Lily uses swearing. But he can tell she is not joking; she looks fierce, that look she gets some times when you can believe she is ready to take over the world – the look that made James start falling in love with her, after years of a shallow crush.

He nods; he believes her words. Silently he makes a similar promise.

Then Sirius starts snoring riotously, ruining the solemnity of the moment. James and Lily put their hands to their mouths to stifle a panic attack of laughter.

`How are _we_ supposed to get back to bed?´ she asks, looking at the heavy load over their legs.

`I think we'll have to wait until he wakes up.´

It's almost dawn. Lily rolls her eyes with horror.

`Right. One more funeral: I'm going to kill Sirius Black,´ she declares.


End file.
